K. D. Har : A Public Sociologist in (Post)Colonial Korea

K.D. Har (1897-1951) is one of the first pioneers of Korean sociology, and maybe the very first Korean public sociologist. He was the student of Richard Cabot and James Ford at Harvard, and his book <Social Laws: A Study of the Validity of Sociological Generalizations> was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1930. In his book, he argued that sociology is not science like natural sciences, but we should see it more as “social arts.”  Sociologists can not separate ourselves from the society, but only parts of the society that we are studying. In this sense, he argues for the need to engage in the public action to reform the society.

However, his hope to become a public sociologist in Korea was not possible due to the Japanese Colonial rule and the authoritarian post-colonial South Korean government  Japanese colonial government regarded sociology as a discipline to teach the ideas of communism and social action, thus banned teaching sociology at universities in Korea. K. D. Har was not able to teach sociology, and eventually kicked out from the university. After liberation from Japan, he pursued the career in journalism, but his newspaper was not allowed to publish due to its critical report on post-Colonial South Korean government. Using K.D. Har as a case study, this paper discusses the potentials and limits of public sociology in (post) colonial context, and explores the challenges of global sociology in (post) colonial context.